Edda

Edda is an Igbo clan of Ebonyi State, in the local government area that carries its name: Afikpo South, also called Edda. Its ancestral capital is Nguzu Edda, and its ten autonomous communities hold some seventy-two villages between them.

Edda, not Ada: the name Forde & Jones print with an a is the anglicised spelling of Edda, and the clan's own name is Edda. Its people are the Edda, and the land is Edda.

Edda is a hill country. Its towns sit on the high ground of Afikpo South looking over the Cross River plain, and that ground is why the clan held out as long as it did when the columns came through in the early years of the last century: the settlements were on the tops and the approaches were narrow.

Ten communities make the clan — Nguzu Edda at the head, then Ekoli, Ebunwana, Owutu, Oso, Amangwu, Etiti, Ogbu, Amasiri and Okporoenyi. Each has its own Ezeogo, and the Ezeogo of Nguzu is recognised as the Eze Edda, the paramount ruler of the whole.

The clan's original speech is gone. The Edda once spoke a language of their own, closer to the Cross River tongues than to Igbo, and it faded into the Igbo they speak now, which keeps a strong accent and a vocabulary from the river neighbours. It is this that makes an Edda man recognisable in a room full of Igbo speakers.

The age grade is the spine of the society. Age mates are grouped by birth year, they compete to build the schools, roads and markets their town needs, and they pass through the Ogo together as the rite that makes them adults. An age grade that has grown old is retired from the work — ikpa unwu — and becomes part of the council of elders. The year turns at the Ike-ji Edda, the new yam festival.